It's the law of unintended consequences: things happening that you don't expect from a seemingly unrelated area. This article talks about a data center having leaks from carpet cleaning above. The concrete floor had aged and the carpet cleaners dumped water on the carpet to soak it through and it leaked. I'm not sure how people have data centers below office floors, but I know I've had a number of them at different companies where I've worked.

It goes to show you just how wide and varied the issues that your disaster recovery plans might need to deal with. All types of strange things can happen to your servers and it helps to have an idea of what to do when there is some type of issue. Can you imagine if there weren't sheets of plastic nearby? (see the article)

Not every disaster results in your setting up shop at another location and while many are serious, they can be resolved relatively quickly with good administrators that can think outside the box.

The situation is a good example of why you need to have good communication and information available to people working in the production areas. They should be able to contact someone that can give them access or at least accompany them to closed off areas, like offices, electrical closets, etc. They should also be able to contact someone with the authority to authorize expenditures and changes in policy because of some disaster event.

These types of things will always happen, but they shouldn't compromise your security or the integrity of your systems. Make sure that your disaster plans have accounted for different types of problems. Not specifics like fire, flood, but categories, like an event in that's limited in scope, that affects a whole floor or building, that occurs off hours, that could affect your block or even city, etc.

The one thing that probably applies here that I learned a long time ago is the Boy Scout Motto: Be Prepared.

Steve Jones

PS - For those of you in the US, a moment of silence for those lost on 9/11.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrongs look like right in their eyes.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

9-11 was an inside job! or do you believe that steel structures (the towers) could come down in free fall speed without explosives? or do you think that hijacked airplanes can fly around US airspace without beeing intercepted within 10 minutes, which is the usual procedure (happen more than 100 times a year). Who talks about a free world?

A few years back a big insurance company in France decided to build a new data center. For DR purposes they duplexed everything in the two suites. A server rack on the ground floor had an identical server rack in the same position on the top floor. A SAN on the ground floor had an identcal SAN on the top floor. Keeping the layout mirrored in this way helped reduce management costs.

Except they forgot to check floor loadings.

One day the top floor became the ground floor. Server rack crashed into server rack, SAN crashed into SAN. It took a long time to clear up the mess, and the impact on the business was so great the company was sold.

It is not only water that can fall through the cieling...

Original author: SQL Server FineBuild1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.29 Aug 2016: now over 38,000 downloads.Disclaimer: All information provided is a personal opinion that may not match reality.Quote: "When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist." - Archbishop Hélder Câmara

all I meant was that not only Americans were affected by what happened. Plenty of non-Americans lived in NY and worked in the WTC who died on that day too.

P.S.

Conspiracy theories appear whenever something of such big import occurs, whether its a terrorist attack or a historical occurance like the moon landing. We will never know if it was an inside job, disinformation makes damn sure of that.

well, the official story is a conspiracy theory, that 19 guys with box-cutters led by a man in a cave in afghanistan conspired to outfox tha most sophisticated defensesystem in history and perpetrated these atrocities.

so, which one of the conspiracy theories are true? We can judge that after the evidence we have. An overwhelmingly amount of evidence tells us that 9-11 was in inside job, please look for yourself for 10 minutes.

I work with an organization in Arlington, VA who is on the 2nd floor of one of the high-rises in Crystal City. A well-known "prime" steakhouse is located on the 11th floor of the same building. A graywater pipe got clogged, broke, and flooded the 2nd floor office space with over a foot of graywater (think greasy sludge). They had to move out for months while everything 3-feet up from the floor was replaced. Yuk!

Conspiracy theories appear whenever something of such big import occurs, whether its a terrorist attack or a historical occurance like the moon landing. We will never know if it was an inside job, disinformation makes damn sure of that.

Skepticism is good, however too many 'skeptics' do not apply the same degree of skepticism to their (contradictory) pet theories that they apply to others (just like people don't apply the same level of skepticism to their religion that they do to others)